From the Very Beginning ....to the Troubled Times to come Before the Deluge...

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Wednesday, 6 August 2014

Hiroshima Day

Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki

By David Kriege

Just as most [of these] students do not take personal
ethical responsibility to protest involvement in nuclear weapons research and
development by their university, most leaders and potential leaders of nuclear
weapons states do not accept the necessity of challenging the nuclear status
quo and working to achieve nuclear disarmament.

What helped me to understand the horrendous consequences and
risks of nuclear weapons was a visit to the memorial museums at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki when I was 21 years old. These museums keep alive the memory of the
destructiveness of the relatively small nuclear weapons that were used on these
two cities. They also provide a glimpse into the human suffering caused by
nuclear weapons. I have long believed that a visit to one or both of these
museums should be a requirement for any leader of a nuclear weapons state.
Without visiting these museums and being exposed by film, artifacts and
displays to the devastation that nuclear weapons cause, it is difficult to
grasp the extent of the destructiveness of these devices. One realizes that
nuclear weapons are not even weapons at all, but something far more ominous.
They are instruments of genocide and perhaps omnicide, the destruction of all.

To the best of my knowledge, no head of state or government
of a nuclear weapons state has actually visited these museums before or during
his or her term in office. If political leaders will not make the effort to
visit the sites of nuclear devastation, then it is necessary for the people of
their countries to bring the message of these cities to them. But first, of
course, the people must themselves be exposed to the stories and messages of
these cities. It is unrealistic to expect that many people will travel to
Hiroshima or Nagasaki to visit the memorial museums, but it is not unrealistic
to bring the messages of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to communities all over the
world.

In Santa Barbara, where the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is
located, we have tried to bring the message of Hiroshima to our community and
beyond. On the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima we created a peace
memorial garden that we named Sadako Peace Garden. The name Sadako comes from
that of a young girl, Sadako Sasaki, who was exposed to radiation as a
two-year-old in Hiroshima when the bomb fell. Sadako lived a normal life for
the next ten years until she developed leukemia as a result of the radiation
exposure. During her hospitalization, Sadako folded paper cranes in the hopes
of recovering her health. The crane is a symbol of health and longevity in
Japan, and it is believed that if one folds one thousand paper cranes they will
have their wish come true. Sadako wished to regain her health and for peace in
the world. On one of her paper cranes she wrote this short poem, “I will write
peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.”

Sadako did not finish folding her one thousand paper cranes
before her short life came to an end. Her classmates, however, responded to
Sadako’s courage and her wish for peace by finishing the job of folding the
thousand paper cranes. Soon Sadako’s story began to spread, and throughout
Japan children folded paper cranes in remembrance of her and her wish for
peace. Tens of thousands of paper cranes poured into Hiroshima from all over
Japan. Eventually, Sadako’s story spread throughout the world, and today many
children in distant lands have heard of Sadako and have folded paper cranes in
her memory.

In Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park there stands a monument to
Sadako. At the base of that monument is this message, “This is our cry. This is
our prayer. For peace in this world.” It is the message of children throughout
the world who honor Sadako’s memory.

Sadako Peace Garden in Santa Barbara is a beautiful,
tranquil place. In this garden are some large rocks, and cranes are carved in
relief onto their surfaces. Each year on August 6th, Hiroshima Day, we
celebrate Sadako Peace Day, a day of remembrance of Sadako and other innocent
victims of war. Each year on Sadako Peace Day we have music, reflection and
poetry at Sadako Peace Garden. In this way, we seek to keep the memory of
Hiroshima alive in our community.

In addition to creating Sadako Peace Garden and holding an
annual commemoration on Hiroshima Day, we also made arrangements with the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums to bring an exhibition about the
destruction caused by the atomic weapons to our community. The museums sent an
impressive exhibition that included artifacts, photographs and videos. The
exhibit helped make what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki real to many
members of our community.

At the time of the exhibit, several hibakusha, survivors of
the bombings, visited our community and spoke in public about their
experiences. They brought to life the horrors of nuclear weapons by relating their
personal experiences. There are also many books that collect the stories of
atomic bomb survivors. It is nearly impossible to hear or read of their
experiences without being deeply moved.

Here is the description of one hibakusha, Miyoko Matsubara,
who was a 12-year-old schoolgirl in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing. Her
description begins upon awakening from being unconscious after the bombing:

“I had no idea how long I had lain unconscious, but when I
regained consciousness the bright sunny morning had turned into night. Takiko,
who had stood next to me, had simply disappeared from my sight. I could see
none of my friends nor any other students. Perhaps they had been blown away by
the blast.

“I rose to my feet surprised. All that was left of my jacket
was the upper part around my chest. And my baggy working trousers were gone,
leaving only the waistband and a few patches of cloth. The only clothes left on
me were dirty white underwear.

“Then I realized that my face, hands, and legs had been
burned, and were swollen with the skin peeled off and hanging down in shreds. I
was bleeding and some areas had turned yellow. Terror struck me, and I felt
that I had to go home. And the next moment, I frantically started running away
from the scene forgetting all about the heat and pain.

“On my way home, I saw a lot of people. All of them were
almost naked and looked like characters out of horror movies with their skin
and flesh horribly burned and blistered. The place around the Tsurumi bridge
was crowded with many injured people. They held their arms aloft in front of
them. Their hair stood on end. They were groaning and cursing. With pain in
their eyes and furious looks on their faces, they were crying out for their
mothers to help them.

“I was feeling unbearably hot, so I went down to the river.
There were a lot of people in the water crying and shouting for help. Countless
dead bodies were being carried away by the water - some floating, some sinking.
Some bodies had been badly hurt, and their intestines were exposed. It was a
horrible sight, yet I had to jump in the water to save myself from heat I felt
all over.”

After describing her personal struggle as a survivor of the
bombing, Miyoko Matsubara offered this message to the young people of the
world: “Nuclear weapons do not deter war. Nuclear weapons and human beings
cannot co-exist. We all must learn the value of human life. If you do not agree
with me on this, please come to Hiroshima and see for yourself the destructive
power of these deadly weapons at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.”

A Simple Proposal

I would like to offer a simple proposal related to
remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is also a way to confront the
deadening myths in our culture that surround the bombing of these cities. I
suggest that every community throughout the globe commemorate the period August
6th through August 9th as Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days. The commemoration can be
short or long, simple or elaborate, but these days should not be forgotten. By
looking back we can also look forward and remain cognizant of the risks that
are before us. These commemorations also provide a time to focus on what needs
to be done to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. By
keeping the memory of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alive we may also
be helping to keep humanity alive. This is a critical part of our
responsibility as citizens of Earth living in the Nuclear Age.

Each year on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days, August 6th and 9th
respectively, the mayors of these two cities deliver proclamations on behalf of
their cities. These proclamations are distributed via the internet and by other
means. Copies may be obtained in advance and shared on the occasion of a
community commemoration of these days. It is also a time in which stories of
the hibakusha, the survivors, may be shared and a time to bring experts to
speak on current nuclear threats.

The world needs common symbols to bring us together. One
such common symbol is the photograph of the Earth from outer space. It is a
symbol that makes us understand immediately that we all share a common planet
and a common future. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are other common symbols. We know
that these names stand for more than cities in Japan; they stand for the
massive destructiveness of nuclear weapons and for the human strength and
spirit needed to overcome this destructiveness.

The world needs to recall and reflect on the experiences of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki as symbols of human strength and indomitable spirit. We
need to be able to remember truly what happened to these cities if we are going
to unite to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. We need to
understand that it is not necessary to be victims of our own technologies, that
we are capable of controlling even the most dangerous of them.

In their book, Hiroshima in America, Lifton and Mitchell
conclude:

“Confronting
Hiroshima can be a powerful source of renewal. It can enable us to emerge from
nuclear entrapment and rediscover our imaginative capacities on behalf of human
good. We can overcome our moral inversion and cease to justify weapons or
actions of mass killing. We can condemn and then step back from acts of
desecration and recognize what Camus called a ‘philosophy of limits.’ In that
way we can also take steps to cease betraying ourselves, cease harming and
deceiving our own people. We can also free our society from its apocalyptic
concealment, and in the process enlarge our vision. We can break out of our
long-standing numbing in the vitalizing endeavor of learning, or relearning, to
feel. And we can divest ourselves of a debilitating sense of futurelessness and
once more feel bonded to past and future generations.”

The future is in our hands. We must not be content to drift
along on the path of nuclear terror. Our responsibility as citizens of Earth
and of all nations is to grasp the enormity of our challenge in the Nuclear Age
and to rise to that challenge on behalf of ourselves, our children and all
future generations. Our task must be to reclaim our humanity and assure our
common future by ridding the world of these inhumane instruments of
indiscriminate death and destruction. The path to assuring humanity’s future
runs through Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s past.

David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the co-author of Choose Hope, Your Role
in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway Press, 2002) and the editor of
Hope in a Dark Time, Reflections on Humanity’s Future (Capra Press, 2003). This
article is being published as Blackaby Paper #4 by Abolition 2000-UK.

about me

A new counter-culture is now spreading across the planet, a movement dedicated to protesting at the outlandish behaviour of the control freaks, with their surveillance, eavesdropping, secrecy and lies. Their greed and belligerent sabre rattling and their industries of war. The dream is to replace these sociopaths with Love!

I wish this blog to be a small part of this - We must be the change.

We will be set to task to rebuild our world and our planet from centuries of decimation and destruction brought on by the fallacy, the belief that we once tragically and collectively embraced thousands of years ago – the mistaken notion that we are separate from one another and everything else on the planet and in the universe. We will finally recognize that the truth is just the opposite – we are all one with everything on the planet and in the universe. We are spiritual beings, infinite consciousness simply having a human experience, and as soon we come to fully recognize and understand this, it will then finally be time for us to fly – to shine in all of our infinite, glorious possibility...